As influencer marketing strives for authenticity, diversity and independence are key

This is perverse, Albon explained, when arguably the whole point of influencers is that they don’t all look and sound the same.

“I think it's on agencies and brands from a position of privilege to make sure that we are uplifting marginalized voices, ensuring that we are working with a cross-section of society... and to hold brands accountable," Albon says. Brands and agencies have a duty, he goes on, "to make sure… their campaigns benefit the work of influencers who don't look and live and sound like TV personalities.”

Albon’s point hints at the crux of the importance of the question that originally gathered our panelists: ‘Who influences the influencers?’ Because if brands and agencies are looking for good return on investment (ROI) on their influencer relationships, they’d do well to look at the barriers to entry that influence the final content, as much as the positive inputs everyone involved works so hard to ensure go into the mix.

Insight flips the industry

Paula Albuquerque, UK vice president and managing partner at Ykone, and Lucy Edgereley, director of influence at Born Social, agree that influencer independence is key to making good content, and maintaining audience engagement and strong relationships with creators.

“We talk a lot about prescribing brand content and thinking that is the way to go,” Albuquerque said. “But to unleash the true value of an influencer, you absolutely have to let go of control. Otherwise, you might as well just turn to traditional media, because you're definitely not there to properly explore what a creator is about.”

Edgerley, coming from a strategy perspective, adds that behavior often influences where money is spent, saying that ultimately: “what makes a quality influencer is actually what they're producing and what they're putting out there.” Edgerley stresses that, over the last few years especially, the rise of social, and the power of insights, had “flipped the industry” in terms of who held the power to dictate to whom.

“It was usually a group of creatives deciding 'this is what our brand cares about, this is what we want to say as the brand', outwards. And then we [the influencer team] were asked, ‘Could you just get a few influencers and celebrities to reel this off and just kind of repeat the script? I actually was asked once if they could just read the TV ad script, which I said no to.”

The difference now, Edgereley says, is that these decisions are increasingly shaped by insights, including insights that originate on social media themselves. “We’re seeing consumer insights being born in these conversations, in the comment sections on social content and therefore that's where the idea starts and breeds from.”

It’s important, both Edgerley and Albon say, for brands therefore to invest in long-term relationships with their influencers. “You can't tell your brand's entire story in one Instagram Reel,” Edgerley said. She adds that consumers are often bombarded with paid partnerships on their feeds and long-term, successful working relationships with a creator are essential if brands want to ensure the output they pay for is authentic.

Escaping the algorithm

It wouldn’t be 2024 if the panelists didn’t discuss AI. Edgerley struck a positive chord, stressing how hard it can be to overcome the power of the algorithm – and the role that AI can play in helping us to reach outside our own ‘bubbles’.

“It means that you can find creators that sit outside of your own algorithm, outside of your own ‘for you’ page, which is really important because ultimately your algorithm is biased. And as Sammy [Albon] said, earlier, platforms have a lot to answer to in that sense.”

For Albon, this links back to the barriers to entry that can shape which influences are involved in which campaigns – from PDFs not being screen-reader friendly, to a recent upsetting example of an influencer not being able to collect an award at a ceremony as the stage wasn’t accessible by wheelchair.

While analytics have greatly shaped the way influencers work, and the content they produce – a lot still needs to be done, Albuquerque says. She says that most brands are still unhappy with how their influencer campaigns are measured. As she puts it, it's all about “not only looking at your brand’s metrics but also analyzing more qualitative data as well, which is absolutely key because most of the intangible value that an influencer delivers is not related to vanity metrics.”

Neil Brennan, vice president for creative marketing at social and consumer intelligence shop Meltwater, who had sponsored the event, wrapped up the talk, explaining how Meltwater’s software could streamline the relationship between brands and influencers. And AI, he says, has another role to play in shaping the future work creators make. “Historically, the only way to really search for content was based on hashtags, keywords, or anything that came up in a bio. So AI has really helped us to be able to tease apart images and videos now to be able to group content together based on the actual content itself and not the written text promoting it.”